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Nancy Spero Sky Goddess

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Nancy Spero Sky Goddess kaufmann repetto Nancy Spero Sky Goddess kaufmann repetto is honored to present Sky Goddess, an exhibition of works by American artist and activist, Nancy Spero (1926-2009). Through the use of historical text and imagery, Nancy Spero created a lexicon in which women are the protagonists in the origin and development of human race and culture. Her work counters the patriarchal lens through which our understanding of civilization has been constructed and positions itself, instead, in a world where female reality is human reality. While the universal has been projected as male oriented and dominated, Nancy Spero’s works address a remembrance of history that contradicts this singularized scope through which human beings have been represented in society. In the mid-1960’s - 70’s, Spero began to work with painting and later collage and printing techniques on paper, as in her politically charged bodies of work, The War Series (1966-70), Artaud Paintings (1969-72) and Codex Artaud (1971-73), in lieu of the more conventionally accepted and affirmative stretched and framed canvas. Her decision to utilize paper, often presented in a scroll-like manner, mimicking the formal capacities of the friezes and frescos she experienced while living in Italy from 1956-1957, destabilized the value assignations dedicated to these traditional means of presentation. Spero simultaneously considered the use of paper as an anti- establishment act of defiance and also embraced it for its fragility and disposable nature which transformed the works into ephemeral monuments. The orientation of the paper scrolls allowed for Spero to selectively activate and vacate ground as a means to create rhythms that directed viewers’ attention to the blank spaces or blind spots in the retelling of history. The title of the exhibition refers to the repeated matriarchal figure arching over earth and its inhabitants, which dates to Egyptian and later Roman usage, and is seen throughout many of Spero’s works on paper and within her wall-based installations made later in life. In her works, ancient figures, such as sky goddesses and various fertility goddesses, are positioned adjacent to those from more recent history, such as victims of violent war crimes during World War II or in South America, and from contemporary culture, like Picasso’s cubic woman and Marlene Dietrich. Others are conceived by Spero herself, as in the personified atomic bursts and decapitated heads initially produced in The War Series, made in response to US participation in the Vietnam war, and later revisited during the War in Iraq in her final major work entitled Maypole: Take No Prisoners (2007). By reprinting and reproducing the same figure within an individual artwork or throughout a series of works, Spero was able to translate various associations to a single character. These women and figures act like hieroglyphs, where images of the past speak of the present and to the future. In the works on view from the 1980’s through to the early 2000’s, woman is portrayed with a celebratory vitality via an optimistic approach to color and visual cadence. Here, woman is in control of her own body and her own destiny. Spero’s artworks are acts of rebellion that bring into question the parameters of political and societal discourse as are commonly conceived and shift attention towards the prioritization of the lesser told stories, where woman is not the other, she is the activator. As Nancy Spero herself both challenged and encouraged, “Let’s lead, let’s run ahead, let’s be in the forefront!” via di porta tenaglia 7 milano +39 0272094331 535 west 22nd street new york +1 9173883580 kaufmann repetto Nancy Spero’s (b. Cleveland, OH, 1926 - New York, NY, 2009) more than fifty-year artistic career spans the entire post-war period. Through her artwork and activism, Spero advocated for the equal treatment of women in the art world. She was a member of the Art Workers Coalition (1968-69), Women Artists in Revolution (1969) and the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists (1971), which would become A.I.R Gallery, the first women’s cooperative gallery, of which she was a founding member. Major monographic exhibitions of Spero’s work have been shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela; de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Sammlung Nordrhein Westfalen in Dusseldorf presented her War Series in January 2012. In 2007, her installation Maypole/Take No Prisoners was presented at the Venice Biennale, and her last monumental scroll work, Cri du Coeur, was shown at the 2010 Bienal of Sao Paolo. In 2003, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, UK presented, Otherworlds, a major two-person exhibition featuring Spero’s works alongside those by Kiki Smith. Spero’s work was also featured in the Gwangju Biennale (2000), Whitney Biennial (1993), and Documenta X (1997). Spero’s work is included in over 50 prominent public collections worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Centre Georges Pompidou; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Tate Gallery, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Forthcoming exhibitions of Nancy Spero’s work include Nancy Spero: Paper Mirror, Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemperaneo, Mexico City October 6, 2018 - February 17, 2019; and Nancy Spero: Unbound, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, September 13, 2018 - January 20, 2019. This exhibition has been organized in cooperation with Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. via di porta tenaglia 7 milano +39 0272094331 535 west 22nd street new york +1 9173883580.
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